Why You Need to Build Your Foundation First to Start Your Assisted Living Business
Jun 13, 2026
You may know care better than most people. But starting an assisted living business takes more than heart and experience.
Want the full breakdown? Watch the video below👇
You need a business plan before you chase funding
Before you look for a house, a loan, or a license, you need a clear plan.
Your business plan takes the dream in your head and puts it on paper. It shows what you want to build, who you want to serve, and how your assisted living business will work.
This is what lenders and partners need to see. They cannot read your mind. They need to see your vision clearly.
âś… Write down who you will serve, how many residents you want, and why your home is needed.
You need to understand your numbers before you buy a home
A profitable assisted living business starts with simple math.
The formula is this: revenue minus expenses equals profit.
Your revenue comes from two things. How many residents you serve, and how much you charge each month.
Your main expenses are what I call WIFE’D expenses. That means wages, insurance, food, energy, and debt.
These costs can make or break your business. When you know your numbers first, you can choose the right size home and the right price.
âś… Run the numbers before you fall in love with a property.
You need market research before you pick a location
Market research helps you know if people in your area need assisted living.
You want to know how many seniors live there. You also want to know how many assisted living beds already exist.
This helps you avoid a crowded market. It also helps you spot a strong opportunity.
I’ve seen this help students narrow down their city choices and move forward with more confidence.
âś… Look at your local population, nearby facilities, and open bed demand.
You need clarity before you take action
Many people get stuck in the overwhelm zone. They watch videos, search Google, ask AI, and still do not know what to do next.
Others take action too fast. They buy a house first, then realize the numbers do not work.
The better path is to build your foundation first. That means your business plan, your numbers, and your market research all work together.
đź’ˇ When you have clarity, your next step gets much easier.
Wrap Up
If you want to start an assisted living business, do not begin with the house, the license, or the loan. Start with your foundation.
When your plan, numbers, and market are clear, you can move forward with confidence.
If you need help creating a business plan for your assisted living business, check out the Free Business Plan Checklist.
And if you’re ready to figure out your next step, join me for the next Roadmap Challenge, where I’ll walk you through how to get started.
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:00
Are you a healthcare worker that has been looking at assisted living, then in assisted living facilities and you're like, "Man, I could do this better than anybody else out there. I know I could. I've got the experience. I know how all this care works, but I just don't know how to get started and I feel confused and I feel overwhelmed and I'm not entirely sure what to do to move forward." Like, does that sound like you? And then you're just like, "I want to do this. How do I get started?" Well,
00:00:26
in today's video, why you need to build your foundation first to start your assisted living business, I'm going to share exactly why you need a foundation first so that you can then launch your assisted living business because this is the way that you start. This is the way that you stop getting confused and overwhelmed, stop feeling that way, and actually shift into starting your own assisted living business so that you can move forward with clarity and confidence to having a profitable assisted living
00:00:55
business. Hey friend, my name's Brandon Gustafson. I help healthcare workers start their own assisted living business so they're not stuck trying to figure it out and know exactly what to do next. So, if you're interested in figuring out why you need to build your foundation first and you don't go start looking at funding and licensing and trying a house and all those things first and why you need the foundation first, this is the video for you to help you get unstuck. All right, let's get into it. There are
00:01:21
three things that you need to do before you get started. And those three things are not They are not figure out how to get funding. They are not trying to find the right house. They are not trying to figure out the license. Those are not things that you should be doing in the beginning. Okay? Please They are things you will need to do, but please stop trying to do them from the beginning because that's not going to move you forward. The three things that you need to do, number one is you need to build a
00:01:51
solid business plan first. You're going to build your foundation. And if you need some help building your foundation, just type in foundation, we'll get you a link to a program that I have called the Foundation Builder Program. It's It's designed to help you build a foundation. I'm going to try to share with you why you need to do that here in this video. The first thing that you're going to do though is build a business plan. If you need help with a business plan, by the way, just type in
00:02:12
BP down below to get you access to my free business plan checklist to really help you out as you're trying to figure out how to build a business plan. Now, that business plan is going to help clarify your vision, clarify what you are trying to build. It's going to take all the things that are in your head that you know about assisted living and your dream of what this is going to look like. It's going to take all of those things out. It's going to put it on paper and it's basically a sales letter
00:02:38
to a lender or to a partner that says, "I am really good at this and I know I can do it better than anybody else and this is my vision. This is what it's going to look like. This is how many people we're going to serve. This is the impact that we're going to have. This is what I want to do. This is how I'm going to do it." Okay? You're going to give that over to people. They're going to look at it and they're going to say, "Yep, this looks really good. Let's sign
00:02:58
you up." Or they're going to give you feedback. Okay? I want I want to be very careful with using this word on purpose. They're going to give you feedback in the form of a no that tells you the things that you can improve on your business plan to convince the next person. Now, that is absolutely key. Okay? But it all starts with building a solid business plan, taking everything that is in your head, that you know about assisted living, why you want to do this, and and what it's going to look
00:03:25
like, and the impact that you're going to have on your community, and everything there is taking all of that from here and putting it down on a piece of paper so that the world can see it. Okay? That's what you're going to do because they can't get in your head. They can't understand the thoughts that you have, the things that you're thinking about. They can't do that. So, what you're going to do is you're going to take all that, you're going to put it down on a
00:03:44
piece of paper, you're going to give it out to the world, and people are going to get excited about it or they're not going to care. But one way or the other, you're going to know and you're going to be able to move forward with the people that do care and are excited about it. Okay. That's the first thing. You got to build a business plan. And that can be confusing, it can be overwhelming. You hire a consultant that is going to cost you thousands of dollars. You can try to do it yourself, and you're going to find
00:04:06
that, you know, writing a business plan is actually really hard, and I don't know exactly how to do it. Again, type in foundation if you need some help with this. This is something I I've helped a dozens of my students do so that they have been able to secure millions of dollars in funding so they can get their facility up and running. And it it comes back to to building a business plan. I what I have seen in having been coaching people for since 2022 is the people that take this seriously, the
00:04:34
part about building a business plan, those who take it seriously and actually do the work that I tell them to do and how to build a business plan, they're the ones that are successful. They're the ones that get the funding, that start the business, that have success. The ones that don't, and they're like, "Oh, I just want to try to figure this out." And and they just kind of dabble in something else, they always fizzle out. They never make progress. They don't get where they need
00:04:57
to go because they don't start with the foundation. But when you build this foundation first, you are going to be so much more successful. When you build the business plan first, you are going to be successful. You're going to reach your goals. So that's what you need to do. Okay? That's the first one. The second one is going to be understanding your numbers. And now my healthcare workers, you got into healthcare, I'm going to make a broad statement here, so please don't get offended. You
00:05:22
got into healthcare because you didn't like math, okay? Right? Maybe that's not true, but so many of you are like, "I didn't want to deal with math. I love helping people. I love serving people. That is my jam. I love it. That's what I want to do." Put me in front of an Excel sheet, I go to sleep. You know, that kind of a thing. Okay. I get it. Now, if you need some help if you need an an calculator, just in calculator, we'll get you access to my underwriting calculator um down below.
00:05:50
But, I'm here to tell you you need to understand the numbers. But, I'm also here to tell you that it's not as hard as you think it is. So, the formula for how to figure out the numbers is revenue minus expenses equals profit. That's it. Okay. Now, we need to figure out what our revenue is. Revenue, you have two levers. We have how many residents are in the home, how much we're charging them. We have these two levers we can pull one or both of them. If we have five residents in the home
00:06:18
and we're charging people $5,000 per month, that's $25,000 in revenue potential for us. But, if we change that number from five residents up to 10, and we're still charging $5,000 per month, now we're up to $50,000 in revenue, right? Or, if we keep our number of residents at five and we adjust our number up to $10,000 per month, now we're up to $50,000 there. So, we're doubling our income by pulling just one of those levers. What happens if we pull both of them? We go from 10 residents at
00:06:43
$10,000 per month, boom, to ching, we're up at $100,000 per month in revenue potential that quadruples the amount of revenue potential we had at five residents at $5,000 per month again. So, you can very quickly see how we can pull these levers, what that's going to look like. That's how you understand revenue. Okay. It's very It's a super simple formula. Number of residents times the amount of money that we're charging people per month, that equals revenue. Okay. Simple, right? Super super simple. This
00:07:12
is not complicated. The next piece is your expenses. You need to understand there are the WIFE'D expenses cuz you're married to them. I know it's cheesy, but whatever. Um you're married to these expenses, they're the WIFE'D expenses. They are your top five: wages, insurance, food, energy, which is your utilities, and your debt services, like your house payment, your mortgage payment, your rent payment, whatever that is. Okay. Those five expenses are going to make up 80 to 90% of your expenses. And the
00:07:39
biggest one, wages, the first one in the WIFE'D method, is going to be 50% to 70% of your total expenses, okay? So, if you can figure out your WIFE'd expenses for your home, and it's not that hard, honestly. If you're interested in learning more about the WIFE'd expenses, just type in WIFE'd down below. I'll I'll do a video or I'll send you a link for for one that we've done in the past, okay? But, if you do that, what you're going to find is your revenue minus expenses
00:08:03
equals your profit formula is just so much easier, okay? It's not going to be perfect. It's not going to give you the exact amount, but it's going to get you 80% of the way there. You don't even have to use an Excel sheet for it. You can just write this down on a piece of paper. This is back of the napkin math. It's not hard to do. I do it for people in my roadmap challenge all the time. So, just if you're if you're interested in learning about that, just type in roadmap. We'll get you a link over to
00:08:24
the roadmap challenge. We'd love to have you in there and help you understand the finances and exactly how that works. Or type in foundation and I help you build this. Like, your specific situation, I'll help you build it. So, type in foundation if you are interested in in working through that and helping you build your entire foundation. Now, and once you understand your numbers, you can then move forward with confidence and say, "Okay, I thought what I wanted to do was have, you know,
00:08:49
an unlicensed facility with six beds in it. And what I have found through just running my basic numbers is I'm probably not actually going to make any money when I do that. Even if my beds are full, I'm going to make a few thousand dollars per month. And if I lose one resident, one of those levers goes away or is reduced, then I'm going to lose money on this. And maybe I don't want to do that. Maybe I want to have 10, 12, 16, 20 residents in my home and increase that one lever. Or, maybe I do
00:09:16
want to do six, but I realize that I need to charge people a premium for this. If you're interested in learning how to charge a premium, we'll link a a video that talks about how to charge premium rates in assisted living. Okay? So, maybe that's the decision that you make. But, that decision is going to hinge and influence your decision on the size of home that you're going to buy. So, this is you build the foundation first. So, now you know what home you should be looking for. And when you do that, then
00:09:43
you know, "Hey, I actually found a home. It's a million dollars, and now I need a million dollars for my loan." If you go talk to a lender today, you're like, "I want to start an assisted living facility. Give me money." They're going to say, "Well, good for you. I'm glad you're excited about it, but where's your business plan? Where's your underwriting? What house are you going to look at? How much equity is in it?" They're going to ask
00:09:59
you all these questions, like 20 questions, not even lying. And then you're going to say, "Well, I don't have all that information." And now you're ruining a relationship with a lender that could potentially work with you in the future, but you have gone in unprepared, and it it everything just kind of goes downhill. Build your foundation first. It's going to help you be so much more successful, okay? The third thing that you need to do is your market research. This is such an
00:10:21
important piece of it because it's going to help you validate that the population you want to serve, that there's enough people there for you to serve them, so you can actually keep your beds full. So, you know how and who to market to. So, if I know that I want to serve an elderly population and between the ages of 60 and and 80 or whatever, pick a number, I can go to census.gov or city-data.org or .com, and I can go and grab this data. It's free. It's it's out there. You can just go grab it. And I want to
00:10:49
look in a specific geographic location. I'm going to grab all that information, I'll put it in here, and then I'm going to say, "Okay, cool. Of this population, there are 10,000 people that are kind of fit into the group of people that I want to serve." And now, I teach something in my book, The Profitable Assisted Living Facility. Looks like this. You can get it on on Amazon. Um, or just type in book down below in the comments, we'll get you a link to it. Um, and you can go
00:11:11
grab the book. It's going to help you out. It takes everything in my brain about assisted living, put it in a book form, help you get things launched. But inside the book, I teach the 5% method, and that basically says, "Hey, 5% of the population you want to serve, 5% of them are going to need assisted living." So, if there's 10,000 people in this group, in this area, that are kind of fit your age criteria, the population you want to serve, 5% of them, which is 500 in this example, are going to need
00:11:38
assisted living services. Now, what I want to do at that point is go over and start looking at like the state registry to see how many licensed facilities and licensed beds there are in that specific geographic location. If if I find that there are already 800 beds licensed in that area, probably shouldn't look there. Like it's over saturated. But if I look and I find there's like only 50 of them and I think there's 500 people that need assisted living services, I found a gold mine. I
00:12:04
can make 10 facilities here, right? I don't have to go somewhere else. Like I can just do it all right here. We can make a cool thing right here. We can scale this up. We can own this market 100%, okay? That is what is really cool about doing market research. It gives you and helps you validate those ideas to see, "Hey, is this actually going to work for me or not?" And if it does, then you can really move forward with a lot of confidence that you've got the right spot. One of my students did this and
00:12:29
narrowed her search from I think it was five to seven cities that she was looking at down to three. We were able to easily eliminate two to four of them and really help her hone in and focus on the market that she wanted to work on and work with as she's trying to launch her assisted living business. And that made her a lot more successful, okay? So, the more time that you spend going through this and doing your market research, you're going to have a lot more success, a lot more confidence that
00:12:54
you have honed in and you found the perfect spot for your own assisted living business. Now, when you combine all of these things, when you do your money, you do your market research and then you use that information plus like your desire and your drive and your why behind why you want to do this and you put all of that into a business plan, now you have a foundation that you can, you know, jump launch from and help you be successful. That's the thing that's going to help you move forward. That
00:13:21
foundation is going to help you get clarity and confidence. I teach something that is called the focus clarity quadrant. So, my method for for helping you move forward into launching your assisted living business is I call it the focus framework. Stands for foundation first. That's what we've been talking about today. Optimal property selection, finding the right property, capital and funding, getting the funds that you need to launch your assisted living business, understanding the rules
00:13:43
and regulations. So, you know, just navigating that, getting your license, Medicaid, you know, that that process. And then S is a strategic launch, which means you're running a successful and profitable assisted living business. So, in the focus clarity quadrant, a lot of you um are there's four things, right? Um um but a lot of you are down here in the bottom left in what I call the overwhelm zone. You're in the overwhelm zone. And you're you feel overwhelmed and you're just like, I don't know how to get
00:14:11
started. I don't know where to go. Or you're overwhelmed or you come up here and that's where you like analysis paralysis. You're just doing all the research. You're trying to learn all these things. You're trying to figure it all out. And that is what is creating the confusion. You're looking on Google. You're looking in AI. You're watching YouTube videos. You're getting all this stuff. And it's like, yep, try this. Do this. Do that thing over there. Try
00:14:30
this. Do all of these things. And you're just like, I can't I can't I don't know what to do right here. I feel overwhelmed. I feel confused. I don't know how to get started. And then you either sit like that for years, months or years even. And and you're just like, I don't know how to get started. And and then you just stay stuck there. And and you never move forward. Or some of you, this is kind of what I did, you're bull in a china shop, right? And you move over to the the right side on
00:14:55
the bottom and you take action, but you're not taking the right action. You're just like, I don't know what I'm doing, but I I have a house. Uh it's got four bedrooms in it. I'm going to turn it into an assisted living facility. And you're not doing the research. You're not building a foundation for it. And uh you get into it and you're like, you know, one day you wake up and you're like, crap, now I have the business and I'm full, but I'm actually losing money.
00:15:18
Um that is what I call the hustle zone. And so you kind of want to avoid that one as well cuz it can put you in a bad situation. What you need to do is actually shift all of that and get up here into the top right quadrant. That's what I call the focus zone. It's where you have clarity and you have confidence. And when you have those things, that's what's going to help you move forward. And the way for you to get there is to build your foundation first. That is how you get into the focus zone.
00:15:43
You do your research, you build your business plan, you start taking action, you take the right action to build a solid foundation. And then when you're going through the focus framework, the entire process, it makes it that much easier to find a house or make sure that the house that you have is actually going to be profitable. And helps you find a lender that's going to work with you or a partner or whoever it is, so you can get the funding that you need, so you can launch your assisted living
00:16:06
business. It's going to help you navigate with confidence the process of getting your facility license, if you want to work with Medicaid, you know, all of those things that come from the regulatory environment. It's going to help you navigate that. And then you're going to have this foundation built that's going to help you then push into having a strategic launch of your assisted living business, because now you've thought through the operations and how many staff you need and and who
00:16:30
you're going to hire and the key people and what that looks like. As you're going to be able to do all of that, and then from day one you have a profitable and successful business that is having an incredible impact on your community, helping your friends, your family, your staff, your residents, their families. Everybody's happy and you're having this incredible impact, you're leaving a legacy. And you know, that's why that's why you want to get into this, right? It
00:16:51
it is. So, I hope that was helpful for you. >> [laughter] >> The things that you need to do first, you have got to build your foundation. If you need help with that, type in foundation, we'll give you access we'll give you the link to the foundation builder program. It is designed to help you build that foundation, to help you stop feeling confused, stop feeling overwhelmed, and figure out exactly how to get started. That is what that program is for. It's its singular purpose is to help you build the
00:17:16
foundation the right way. And when you do that, that is going to help you be successful. Now, if you found this video to be helpful, make sure you like the video, subscribe, ring the bell, do all those things that YouTube says that I should tell you to do. I would appreciate it uh because that helps other people like you find this content and helps them level up so that they can then launch their own assisted living business. Are you curious about assisted living but you're just not sure how to get
00:17:39
started? At Assisted Living Investing, I help healthcare workers start their own assisted living business so they're not stuck trying to figure it out and know exactly what they should do next. And I promise you when you build your foundation, you take things and you do it the right way, and you go step-by-step-by-step, I promise you when you do that, you're going to be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
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